"As described by Salon, the flag was given to McLaughlin by Sen. Chuck Schumer's office for his aid to victims on 9/11. He brought the flag to Iraq, thinking he'd take a photo of it overseas. Then, his commander asked to borrow it to drape over the head of the Iraqi dictator's statue."

The poor SOB believed the Bush Adminstration BS linking Saddam and 9/11 and went to war thinking he was getting Payback for the WTC victims

NO WONDER he's more than a little bitter about the experience now:For the 35-year-old lawyer, who provides free legal services to homeless and low-income veterans, victory is not what he remembers. "For me it was a period of death and killing people. I don't like that it facilitated the media's narrative of wars as neat and tidy things, so that's why when I got back home I just put it away."

beyond Poltics or partisanship THIS is why I consider George Bush one of the wprst presidents in US history: he broke faith with our soldiers, and sent them to war on an intentional lie, and let all their suffering and sacrifice be for nothing at all

It seemed like a fark-up to use the USA flag according to the reaction of the crowd. To me, it symbolized that the US had the wrong approach to the "liberation" of Iraq and didn't understand shiat about the people they were "liberating".

No wonder he does to want to give up that flag for public dsplay.

IIRC, they quickly substituted and Iraq flag to the cheers of the crowd.

"As described by Salon, the flag was given to McLaughlin by Sen. Chuck Schumer's office for his aid to victims on 9/11. He brought the flag to Iraq, thinking he'd take a photo of it overseas. Then, his commander asked to borrow it to drape over the head of the Iraqi dictator's statue."

The poor SOB believed the Bush Adminstration BS linking Saddam and 9/11 and went to war thinking he was getting Payback for the WTC victims

NO WONDER he's more than a little bitter about the experience now:For the 35-year-old lawyer, who provides free legal services to homeless and low-income veterans, victory is not what he remembers. "For me it was a period of death and killing people. I don't like that it facilitated the media's narrative of wars as neat and tidy things, so that's why when I got back home I just put it away."

beyond Poltics or partisanship THIS is why I consider George Bush one of the wprst presidents in US history: he broke faith with our soldiers, and sent them to war on an intentional lie, and let all their suffering and sacrifice be for nothing at all

Read Generation Kill. Many of those guys were already aware of the bullshiat early on with the mis-managed invasion and the aftermath. Hell, the Senior NCOs in the book even begin to wonder if there even was some sort of occupation plan.

Hint: there wasn't. I can't blame him for being disillusioned. Many of the vets I teach are the exact same way. They paid a pretty heavy price for Bush/Rumsfelds/Cheney's macho man war.

One of my wife's teabagger Uncles was openly questioning how much the taxpayer (that's his shtick, asking how much "the taxpayer" contributes) contributed towards the death insurance of somebody very close to the family's death in 2003. Guy was shot at the end of the "shock and awe" portion of the war as they entered Baghdad.The Uncle was told to stop it and not delve so deep into a very sensitive subject, especially with bullshiat teabag p ...

I can't prove this, but, I'm about 90% certain after reading everything I could about the invasion of Iraq and the run up to it, that no, no we did not have an occupation plan for Iraq, And the reason for this , as Near as I can tell is that Cheney, and the PNAC set (Scooter Libby in particular) were suckered into the most expensive con job in history by a man named Ahmed Chalabi. As head of "the Iraqi National Congress" Chalabi was lionized by the Neo-con set (Scooter libby once famously calling him "the George Washington of Iraq") His INC also produced "defectors" who were the source for nearly all the intelligence about Iraq having WMDS and all the lurid tales of Saddam's human sized shredders and concrete soccer balls and the like, and both before and during the war He was Judy Miller's main source (she was even his houseguest when she all but commandeered command of the Us Military teams looking for WMDS and sent them chasing around the country based on his "intel").

The architects of the war were convinced that Chalabi had a a devoted and loyal following back in iraq, was a beloved leader-in-exile figure whose followers would pour into the streets and sweep him into power when Saddam was deposed. The CIA knew better, and told the War's Planner's so, but they were ignored. Instead the DIA bought Chalabi a mercenary army and chartered a plane for him so he could land in Baghdad just as US troops were liberating it. The photo-op/publicity stunt this story is about was staged for Chalabi's benefit by the DIA, those are his men surrounding the statue, keeping the populace away, just out of the frame of most of the shots we've seen of this event. The whole idea was to replace Saddam with a new strongman friendly to US interests and then return to business as usual in the country

The plan had a minor flaw: Not only wasn't Chalabi a beloved leader with a devoted resistance movement in the country, most Iraqis had no earthly Idea who the fark he was. Who he really was was a crooked banker from Jordan of Iraqi ancestry who was avoiding a death sentence in Jordan for his role in the Enron-style collapse of the country's largest bank. He also, as time later proved was either always, or later became, a double agent for Iranian intelligence, passing on to them all the sophistacated crypto-gear we gave him, and when the time was right, someone who thought nothing of abandoning US interests and allying himself with Moqtada Al-Sadr-the main leader of the insurgent forces in Iraq.

hdhale:I have said a million times since the start of the Iraq War that the right call was made based upon what we knew at the time...it was only later that we finally figured out what the fark we were doing

Before the invasion, General Shinseki, the Army Chief of Staff, told the Senate the occupation needed several hundred thousand troops.

hdhale:I'm seeing a lot of really bitter, snarky assholes in this thread and an article about one really bitter Marine.

Meanwhile, there's a WW II vet that remembers the hundreds of thousands of German civilians killed in the process of taking down Nazi Germany, shakes his head at all of you, and goes back to reading his paper. War is not something one engages in lightly. People die. Fathers, mothers, sons and daughters die.

I have said a million times since the start of the Iraq War that the right call was made based upon what we knew at the time. I still believe that. I have also said that the occupation was botched early on and it was only later that we finally figured out what the fark we were doing and if you have to point a finger of blame at Bush & Co. point it there. There is no need for tin foil hat grand conspiracy theories about winning daddy's war, big oil, or anything else that makes you no better than the people still looking for the hidden UN troops on US soil.

"bitter Marine"? Maybe he wants the time back that was taken from him for unfit reasons. I know there's a 6 month chunk of time I'd like back with my then-newborn daughter. Doesn't make him bitter - just makes him someone with a unique perspective that chooses not to contribute to a narrative he doesn't have to agree with.

You're WWII? I'm glad you got to be part of the last justifiable war. The rest of us that followed don't necessarily have such a clear conscience.

hdhale:I'm seeing a lot of really bitter, snarky assholes in this thread and an article about one really bitter Marine.

Meanwhile, there's a WW II vet that remembers the hundreds of thousands of German civilians killed in the process of taking down Nazi Germany, shakes his head at all of you, and goes back to reading his paper. War is not something one engages in lightly. People die. Fathers, mothers, sons and daughters die.

I have said a million times since the start of the Iraq War that the right call was made based upon what we knew at the time. I still believe that. I have also said that the occupation was botched early on and it was only later that we finally figured out what the fark we were doing and if you have to point a finger of blame at Bush & Co. point it there. There is no need for tin foil hat grand conspiracy theories about winning daddy's war, big oil, or anything else that makes you no better than the people still looking for the hidden UN troops on US soil.

I know you WANT to believe that, but it simply, proveably, objectively IS NOT TRUE. NO ONE at a decision-making level of the US Government ever seriously believed that Saddam possesed WMDs that were a threat to the us. You really need to google "Lt. Col Karen Kwaitowski" and "The New Pentagon Papers" to get an eyewitness account, from a Reagan appointee, on EXACTLY how the evidence was being manipulated. The CIA kept telling the president (and even more specifically Cheney and Scooter Libby) that the was exactly zero reliable evidence to support the idea that Iraq had WMDS, so in response, Cheney had Rumsfeld turn the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans into an intel shop specifically tasked with finding any scrap of intel from anywhere, no matter how dubious or unreliable to justify the position that Saddam was a danger.

Cheney's hand-written notes from 9/11 as released by the 9/11 Commission show a margin note on document he was looking at on the very day of the attack, two years before the invasion where he says something to the effect of "have to find a way to tie this to Iraq and Saddam"

and then there is the Downing Street Memo- a leaked memo from a meeting with the British Prime Minister in July of 202 where his senior diplomat told him tha the US was determined to invade Iraq and " the intelligence and facts were being fixed around the policy."

I wish it were otherwise, but there were never any good intentions gone wrong in this war. and as for the reason the recontruction went so horribly, read "Life in the emerald City" which explains that at the outset of the recontruction, a conservative aparatchik (and wife of a well-known conservative pundit) was given complete control over who got what jobs during the reconstruction, and he used his power to try to create in Iraq the free-market Utopia conservatives always believe is possible, awarding jobs to people on the basis of ideology rather than competence (which is how a 26-year old graduate of regents U, for example got put in charge of managing Iraq entire budget)

I'm seeing a lot of really bitter, snarky assholes in this thread and an article about one really bitter Marine.

Meanwhile, there's a WW II vet that remembers the hundreds of thousands of German civilians killed in the process of taking down Nazi Germany, shakes his head at all of you, and goes back to reading his paper. War is not something one engages in lightly. People die. Fathers, mothers, sons and daughters die.

I have said a million times since the start of the Iraq War that the right call was made based upon what we knew at the time. I still believe that. I have also said that the occupation was botched early on and it was only later that we finally figured out what the fark we were doing and if you have to point a finger of blame at Bush & Co. point it there. There is no need for tin foil hat grand conspiracy theories about winning daddy's war, big oil, or anything else that makes you no better than the people still looking for the hidden UN troops on US soil.

wingnut396:Magorn: and let all their suffering and sacrifice be for nothing at all

I would not call one upping Daddy and war profiteering nothing at all...

THIS.

It was never meant to "succeed". You all should have known that when they couldn't tell us what success would look like. It was meant to be an unstable shiatstorm where defense contractors and oil men could make money.